Patent GB-1294673-A (GB)
Title: Educational equipment
IPC: G09B7/073
Filed: 1969-11-05
Abstract: 1294673 Teaching machines WESTFALISCHE BERGGEWERKSCHAFTSKASSE 5 Nov 1969 [5 Nov 1968] 54338/69 Heading G5G Equipment by which a plurality of students may be taught, individually or in groups, by the question-and-answer method includes, for each student, a unit at which he may enter responses to questions and receive visual confirmation of the correctness or otherwise of each response entered. For the teacher, there is provided means for entering a correct answer and a monitor which displays and stores at least the first answer given by each student to each question. Thus if a student makes several attempts at answering a question, he receives temporary information as to the correctness of his last answer whereas the teacher receives a permanent indication of the correctness or otherwise of at least the first answer given. The monitor unit, Fig. 1, includes pairs 30, 31 of visual indicators such as lamps, one pair for each student position for each question. Any answer given by any student within a permitted time lights either the "correct" lamp 31 or the incorrect lamp 30; if more than one answer is given both may be lit. In each student's unit, Fig. 2, there are answer-selecting keys a2, b2, c2 and d2 plus a key 43 to be depressed by the student after selecting his answer. If it is correct, a lamp 44 is lit to inform the student and the corresponding lamp 31 is lit in the central monitor or unit. The lamp 31 will however be held on but the lamp 44 extinguished when the key 43 is released. If the answer is incorrect lamp 30 is held on in the monitor and lamp 45 temporarily lit on the student's unit. The student can then "try again" and may get the correct answer at the second or subsequent attempt if the permitted time has not elapsed. The teacher can thus tell from the monitor unit display which students have given (a) only a correct answer, (b) only an incorrect answer or answers, (c) an incorrect answer or answers and, ultimately, the correct one, (d) no answer at all. In the monitor unit display, each student unit is identified merely by number, but the names of the students using each unit may be entered on a list in a holder attached to the monitor unit. A plurality of monitor units may be provided, e.g. one for each of the members of an examining board if the apparatus is to be used to conduct examinations. The Specification discloses suitable control circuitry (Figs. 3 to 11, not shown), which includes components in the teacher's answerentering unit, the monitor and the students' units. When, as described below, a local punched-tape input is applied to one or more of the students' units, the tape is arranged to operate switches in the students' units which have the effect of disconnecting the teacher's answer-entering unit. Different questions may be put to different students, either by the teacher or by means of punched tape programs 53, Fig. 2, insertable into the students' units. In the latter case, the monitor may be connected to display and store the students' responses or disconnected so that the students' units each effectively become individual teaching machines. For such use, the couplings 5, 6 between a student's unit and the teacher's equipment and monitor may be broken.